Obama on Cheney: Waterboarding is Torture

Torture does not produce "actionable intelligence". Torture produces intimidation and false confessions and destroys the morale and moral credibility of the torturer.

Who made the US a torture state against US and International Law? Find out and prosecute or let the precedent stand at your peril.

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/confess/

Of course, the US does not torture. But, under Bush, we outsourced torture. Obama must be pined down as to whether or not we will indulge in this.

I think that adhering to the Geneva conventions would be a step in the right direction with this administration.

i think Obama will end the US's practice of any from of torture. waterboarding and extraordinary rendition are violations of international law. i agree with G. Sandsbury that conforming to the Geneva Conventions would be a good thing.
beto---i hope the outsourcing of torture does stop under Obama, i have a feeling he does not look fondly on torture. and ghost's post makes a very prctical case against torture: it doesn't work in the first place. (thanks also for the link, ghost.)

What a bunch of idealists on here. You have to have the power to place your goodie self in the following scenario: ... ... Your brother was just taken hostage into the mountains following a vicious firefight yielding one dead terrorist and one alive. The Feds call you up and say hey: "We're sure this guy knows where the hideout is and he's not talking. Can we have your permission to use some more elaborate interrogation techniques such as waterboarding?....it worked pretty well in the past and the clock is ticking for your brother". Now, would you goodies say: "Oh no, you'd BETTER NOT! I wouldn't want to be a party to something outside the blah blah convention agreement!" .. .. Well, our soldiers ARE our brothers Mr. personification of idealism. If you were given the chore of interrogation, I'm sure you would have the terrorist half-skinned with his feet in a Microwave before the Feds could stop you.

@Whose: These sorts of arguments are silly - personalizing the situation doesn't change anything. Either you are against torture or you're not. If your beliefs are so shaky that making the victim your brother instead of someone else's brother makes a difference to you, you obviously don't believe that strongly.

Interrogation techniques do not have to involve torture. Period. Tortured confessions and intelligence are unreliable.

wow I can not believe how low we have fallen as a nation, to have made torture an instrument of the state and for actual people, to try to defend its use, we put Japanese leaders on trial for waterboarding our American soldiers during World War 2 and less than a century later the media and some members of the public refuse to call waterboarding what it in fact is TORTURE

"I have never been one of those who saw Barack Obama with blinders on, projecting all my best liberal hopes upon him. However, that said, I will say that just days from his inaugural, it is heartbreaking to my liberal soul to see Obama become so deeply embedded into the Beltway Bubble crowd that he can validate all the logical fallacies that have had so many of us beating our head against the wall for the last eight years."
Here we go again.
So sad.

President Bush is the Leonidas at America’s Thermopylae. He stood the line-he stayed the course caring not for himself but only to protect America. The democrats, who came after him and who may come after him in the future will be remembered for the medizing traitors, which they are. They will be called by the name, American Ephialtes. God bless the warriors for they will do what is necessary to protect America!

I am sure that if the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and their loved ones, spouses and children, who survived had been asked if it is OK to have a GITMO, waterboarding, rendition because it would insure that there would have been no 9/11 and they would live out their natural life spans, they would have said do it. These people and their loved ones are the only persons morally qualified to judge.

The only morality, which matters when confronted with an enemy who has but one goal, your complete and utter extinction, is you better be the ultimate warrior, who will do what it takes to stop it. Obama has shown that he won’t protect the American people and is not the “this so called Messiah thing so favored by a deranged far left.

Obama is the Master of Denial and Lies and all of you will be convinced when one of these released GITMO prisoners kills again but maybe not until one of these released GITMO prisoners kills his or your wife and children like so many on 9/11 and he and you are left standing knowing that it was because of his and your cowardice like it was Clinton’s cowardice who was so concerned by his legacy.

How dare he and all you democrats continue down this avenue after the 60-hour siege that left at least 195 dead, with fear and grief spread across the city of Mumbai especially, when an escaped hostage said on National TV that the terrorists were seeking out people holding British and American passports! This was but a dress rehearsal for things to come and most probably things to come in America, an amphibious assault on major cities.

After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud went back to Afghanistan and quickly resumed his war against the U.S. Aided by his new artificial leg, just months later, in October 2004, Massoud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan working on the Gomal Zam Dam project. Massoud said he had nothing against the Chinese but wanted to embarrass Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for cooperating with the Americans. Pakistani forces stormed Massoud's hideout, killing all the kidnappers, including Massoud.

Terrorism will continue for a hundred years until all who are terrorists realize that there are no 72 virgins waiting for them but only the good life here and now, if you work hard plus the good life hereafter, if you are a moral and upright productive not a destructive citizen.

America’s enemies laugh at and use our sense of accommodating all people in the name of tolerance and diversity and then use it against us. Too think that the released GITMO prisoners won’t return to terrorism and killing Americans is naïve at the best. They will try to take it one step closer to the jihadists' ultimate goal: an America completely subjugated under Islamic law—just the way Osama bin Laden wants it.

Last but not least, Charlie Wilson said, “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world but then we f….. up the end game.” Are there any Charlie Wilsons left in Washington? Are you a Charlie Wilson? Is there any one in Washington who can stop Obama and the Democrats from f…… up this end game? America always goes in with its ideals and we change the world and then we leave, we always leave, but the ball keeps on bouncing.

it's getting old: if you're a democrat you are unamerican and hate your country. that is so stale and lame.

i admire how Bush handled 911 and very little thereafter.

torture does not result in actionable intelligence.

waterboarding and extraordinary rendition are violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, both of which the U.S. is a signatory.

how can something the UN tribunal at the end of WWII considered a war crime (when Japanese authorities were tried and convicted and sentenced to prison terms) now be considered just a little arm-twisting?

the whole reason against torture is that if you practice it, it will be practiced against you.

John McCain is a republican who during his outstanding service to our nation was waterboarded and tortured. he is oppposed to the US sponsoring or practicing both. why? because he was tortured. he has been waterboarded, something that few, if any, posting here have endured. so i take him at his word that waterboarding is torture.

i am a good american and i get angry when people who want to make a cheap political point call those they disagree with unamerican, commies, etc. we are all americans and love our country. we just disagree.

but it's ironic that the hate and namecalling is the exact kind of gut hate that makes torture ok to them. "when they hurt me it's torture, when they hurt someone else it's totally acceptable."

the america i love and support is one that respects and obeys its own laws and the laws of the international community which it has ratified. the US is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions and International law.

Shhh: Obama may create “classified loophole” for enhanced interrogations

The news here is that this isn’t news. Less than a week after the election, rumors were already swirling that he was going to retain the option “in certain cases” to use procedures not authorized by the Army Field Manual. Then the left got him to back down on appointing John Brennan, who’d defended some of Bush’s interrogation policies, as director of the CIA. I thought that signaled the end of heart-ache for Andrew Sullivan, but no: Not only might Brennan end up being placed in a supervisory role, evidently The One’s still flirting with a little presidential prerogative when it comes to especially “difficult” subjects.

For Obama, who repeatedly insisted during the 2008 presidential campaign and the transition period that “America doesn’t torture,” a classified loophole would allow him to back up his vow to end harsh interrogations while retaining a full range of presidential options in conducting the war against terrorism.

The proposed loophole, which could come in the form of a classified annex to the manual, would satisfy intelligence experts who fear that an outright ban of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques would limit the government in obtaining threat information that could save American lives. It would also preserve Obama’s flexibility to authorize any interrogation tactics he might deem necessary for national security.

However, such a move would frustrate Senate Democrats and human rights, retired military and religious groups that have pressed for a government-wide prohibition on methods they describe as torture…

“That would not be good,” said the Rev. Richard Killmer, executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “We don’t need to be able to torture and we don’t need to engage in any interrogation techniques that are not humane. And unless we have absolute clarity that these interrogation techniques will not be used, they are not going to be able to say that.”

Indeed. How is Obama upholding his vow to end harsh interrogations if he’s not ending harsh interrogations? All he’s doing is scaling it down from the level of official policy to an ad hoc contingency, which makes it even more arbitrary and potentially abused. Exit question: The left won’t cut him a break on this the way they will on, say, TARP; absolutist opposition to harsh interrogation in whatever form, from barking dogs on up, is now as central to “progressive” identity as support for abortion is. How can he make them happy while still preserving the option he needs for emergencies? He’s not going to risk his reelection on being caught short-handed in a ticking-bomb scenario.

Is beheading innocent people considered torture?